Of my 62nd birthday I thought I might be a tad less reflective than usual. Oh, who am I kidding? Time for some birthday angst.
As I reflect on 62 summers gone past I must say that, aside from the broken leg of last summer (and even that had some positive moments as I finally let some people take care of me) I don't recall a period of time when I have been happier. Ah, the pleasant joy of owning a home. The puttering (did I neglect to mention I had two Xhose (those fabric lightweight hoses) burst on me Wednesday night necessitating a trip to the Ace Hardware wherein I purchased a heavy vinyl hose and lugged it home under my own limited powers only to have a neighbor offer up a hose (another Xhose) for keeps) in the yard. The vines of tomatoes offering themselves up to the sun and producing a mountain of marinara in return. My roses, my hydrangeas and all the other lovely plant life that makes the house a home. The cats seem to be thriving in the new abode. Simcha, the youngest, under whose ass you could set off a firecracker when he is sleeping and not get a rise out of him. Yankel, the behemoth and gentle giant, who is terrified of thunderstorms and takes shelter in the bathroom. And Gonif, the little guy who stole my heart, the beauty of an Ocicat, whose sensibilities are so tender that he is alert to my levels of distress, which, thankfully, are getting fewer and fewer. All these boys who sleep on the bed with me at night, at least when there is no thunderstorms.
And, as I teeter on the edge of 62 I have mortality issues. Looking back on wasted time and just being wasted. Looking back on sadness. My inability to let go of some past issues and move on. Why the hell was I so immobile that I could not move out of a home with a partner even after finding out how unfaithful they could be? Why I couldn't let go of mother issues long after she passed. Even now I hear her voice admonishing me for not calling more often (it's a collect call to wherever). My parents were so young when they had me. When I was 21 and about to graduate from college my dad was 44 and mom was 41. I recall now what a jerk I was at that age and finally cut them some emotional slack.
I recall a summer road trip to Florida (doesn't everybody go there in the summer?). We drove down in a Plymouth which my dad had outfitted with seat belts shortly before we left on the trip. I was 7. I had discovered the night before we left that I could "hear" myself think...As in "I think, therefore I am"...I spent much of the trip in my head enjoying the process of consciousness and an internal dialogue. I spent the rest of the trip wondering, as we weaved through mountain roads in Kentucky, that we were going to fall off the edge of the world. These thoughts I only shared with myself. Now, looking ahead, it is like that road in Kentucky: overlooking an abyss and hoping I don't fall off the edge of the world. At least not right now...another moment please. On that trip my dad bought me a live starfish which was in a plastic bag full of water. It disintegrated right before my eyes as we drove back. What else was it to do without food and more creature comforts. And my father full of whimsy, thinking what great sport it was to mess with my head when we were touring Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Me, worried at 7 that the ceiling was going to come crashing down upon my head and dad's booming voice trying to make it so. Way to mess with a young one's mind...especially as she had discovered consciousness. Conscience would come later.
So now I have looked back and now I must look forward as that is the only way ahead. But they say the past is merely prologue. And that I believe to be true. I must process some ultimate truths in my head, like I do, like I do. Ii still am having that internal dialogue which I produce on these pages as if someone might be interested in what I have to say. What I really should do is forgive myself for the past and move on. For all those intolerable moments that come creeping up on me at night and haunt me so...just let them go. Maybe the lesson I have learned over time is that to be gentle with myself as well as others. Yes the past is prologue and it has gotten me to this point.
As Buzz would say "To infinity and beyond". And what a strange and beautiful trip it will be.
Friday, June 17, 2016
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
The thigh bone connected to the hip bone...
Twelve years ago my left hip managed to fracture itself after a prolonged period of time on Prednisone. Seems that stuff causes osteoporosis, which it did in my case causing the hip to shatter one Sunday night and my having to crawl to my couch from my kitchen, a journey of fifteen feet which took over two hours. The good doctor decided that at 50 I didn't require a hip replacement so he put four very looooooong screws in place. I was off of work for six weeks and rehabbing for another few weeks after that. Fast forward those twelve years and I now have a lovely cyst surrounding those screws and both will have to come out. Putz is what he was and who. The pain from the break was the worse pain I have ever experienced and the morphine drip did little to cut the pain levels.
Now with the cyst it hurts to walk; not like it did before but enough to make me gimpy. A CT scan has been ordered and the next step is up to the new orthopod, the good doctor with the impossible to pronounce last name. He did show me the x-rays and I thought I had a white spot on my hip but it proved to be the mouse pointer. I did however see the cyst surrounding the screws, those mighty screws, and right now he feels like it might be better to take the screws out and fill the holes with super bone gel and get rid of the cyst altogether. I am on board with that idea but wonder how long I will be sidelined. So as Roseanne Roseannadanna used to opine "it's always something".
Other than that I am having a lovely week. Bored at work without my traditional authority work to do, waiting for some records to be loaded, I fill my days with computer courses and unmulvering records that should have never been mulvered in the first place (sorry for the specific library jargon). It is mind numbing work and I live for the afternoons when I can take those online courses. And walks. But with the ache in my hip I have to push myself to walk. I did get a steroid injection in the offending hip yesterday but the groin ache is still present. But walk I will. I barely got in five miles yesterday but I did. Not the ten miles I was able to do Sunday but at least the five. And that on a gimpy leg. Call me Sore-us Gimp. No, call me Ishmael. I see a wail in my future.
Now with the cyst it hurts to walk; not like it did before but enough to make me gimpy. A CT scan has been ordered and the next step is up to the new orthopod, the good doctor with the impossible to pronounce last name. He did show me the x-rays and I thought I had a white spot on my hip but it proved to be the mouse pointer. I did however see the cyst surrounding the screws, those mighty screws, and right now he feels like it might be better to take the screws out and fill the holes with super bone gel and get rid of the cyst altogether. I am on board with that idea but wonder how long I will be sidelined. So as Roseanne Roseannadanna used to opine "it's always something".
Other than that I am having a lovely week. Bored at work without my traditional authority work to do, waiting for some records to be loaded, I fill my days with computer courses and unmulvering records that should have never been mulvered in the first place (sorry for the specific library jargon). It is mind numbing work and I live for the afternoons when I can take those online courses. And walks. But with the ache in my hip I have to push myself to walk. I did get a steroid injection in the offending hip yesterday but the groin ache is still present. But walk I will. I barely got in five miles yesterday but I did. Not the ten miles I was able to do Sunday but at least the five. And that on a gimpy leg. Call me Sore-us Gimp. No, call me Ishmael. I see a wail in my future.
Thursday, June 2, 2016
Today
And I was just thinking...Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. Geez, I thought I came up with that gem but no, it was Dale Honest-to-God Carnegie. Next I suppose I will find out that my dad's gem "To be a king is not worth it" was spoke or spake by someone of the same ilk. I have Googled both and can only find the quote by Dale Honest-to-God Carnegie. So maybe my dad was an original thinker. But I do so enjoy Mel Brooks who once opined "it is good to be king" and I tend to follow that line of thinking more. My dad was not an uber achiever so I can well believe his catchphrase of not being king was his way of minimizing the hurt of not being more than a Willie Loman-type salesman and I his Biff.
I was playing guitar with the original Old Duffer 1.0 and as he was leaving he was telling me his children were estranged from he and his wife. I was on the other side of this fence as I was once estranged from my parents, or rather my mother, who had no gems of her own other than what she wore. Her line that "she gave me life and she could take it away..." scared the hell out of me but then I found out this was somehow against the law and she couldn't or wouldn't do that and by the time I was 16 I was really a psychotic mess. So when I left for graduate school in 1976 I rarely went home after that. My mother had a breakdown the first semester I was gone and was hospitalized. I came home to be with dad and my mother's mother only to find out mom had checked herself out of rehab AMA to be with me. She was an awful sloppy drunk and for years I never went home. I would on occasion sneak home to see my grandmother and her sisters but not the parental units. And my mother refused to come up to see me as the mountain should come to Mohammad on those occasions.
Mother died in 1994 at age 59. I was a mere child of 39. My dad and I had ten good years together after that. He would come up to visit this mountain at least four times a year. When I had surgery for cancer he delayed his own cancer surgery to nurse me back to health. He died of cancer that following year. But, as I said, we had ten good years together. That is not to say I wasn't a bit abrasive to him at times, a little bitchy as it were. And, yes, I regret that. But I digress.
Old Duffer 1.0 is estranged from his two children. Maybe that is why he feels a bond towards me. Someone to play with and commiserate with. Or, maybe, just maybe, he is in cahoots with the rabbi and it is a ploy to bring me more firmly into the fold of the congregation. Whatever. The Old Duffer 1.0 is saddened by his children so if I can help to explicate the estrangement from the child's point of view maybe that will ease his pain. Old Duffer and Mrs. Old Duffer are lovely people but I can see how the professorial Old Duffer might be an annoyance. It takes all my patience and good will to suck it up and play with him for two hours at a stretch. Now he wants me to join he and his wife at the community sings and play along with Mitch, or rather Sally. I doubt that will happen this month but maybe in the future.
Actually they want me to play and that is a compliment of sorts. But the mere thought of listening to others flail at the sing-along makes me quake. I think this month this orphan of the storm has too much going on to engage with these good folks. But the thought, just the thought, of doing this and giving up my childish things and joining the ranks of Duffers leaves me cold.
I do attract the Old Duffers of the world. Mrs. Shankland across the way, or street as it were, has bonded to me on a strange mother/daughter sort of way. She constantly comes over and checks out my garden and gives me extended visits where she talks non-stop about things that interest her, like Old Duffer 1.0 and I, like a good child, cajole and listen. And such is the nature of my relationships with the Old Duffers of the universe. To cajole and listen raptly.
I suppose this makes of me an Old Duffer aficionado. I do so loves me a good Old Duffer. My dad was a premature Old Duffer and really grew into the role when we spent a few weeks together in my tiny condo as he stayed with me post kidney surgery. That last six months when we both had cancer diagnoses was the closest we had been in a long time. Not since those summers when he beat me at tennis as he refused to chase the ball and insisted that I hit it back to him without reciprocity were good years. And I last time I saw him I think I had a foreshadowing of his passing, which he did a few weeks later. I knew when the neighbor called me that Monday night that he was gone, even before she found him laying dead in the family manse.
And now I have Old Duffer 1.0 once a week, grooming me for the community sings. Gotta love Old Duffers.
I was playing guitar with the original Old Duffer 1.0 and as he was leaving he was telling me his children were estranged from he and his wife. I was on the other side of this fence as I was once estranged from my parents, or rather my mother, who had no gems of her own other than what she wore. Her line that "she gave me life and she could take it away..." scared the hell out of me but then I found out this was somehow against the law and she couldn't or wouldn't do that and by the time I was 16 I was really a psychotic mess. So when I left for graduate school in 1976 I rarely went home after that. My mother had a breakdown the first semester I was gone and was hospitalized. I came home to be with dad and my mother's mother only to find out mom had checked herself out of rehab AMA to be with me. She was an awful sloppy drunk and for years I never went home. I would on occasion sneak home to see my grandmother and her sisters but not the parental units. And my mother refused to come up to see me as the mountain should come to Mohammad on those occasions.
Mother died in 1994 at age 59. I was a mere child of 39. My dad and I had ten good years together after that. He would come up to visit this mountain at least four times a year. When I had surgery for cancer he delayed his own cancer surgery to nurse me back to health. He died of cancer that following year. But, as I said, we had ten good years together. That is not to say I wasn't a bit abrasive to him at times, a little bitchy as it were. And, yes, I regret that. But I digress.
Old Duffer 1.0 is estranged from his two children. Maybe that is why he feels a bond towards me. Someone to play with and commiserate with. Or, maybe, just maybe, he is in cahoots with the rabbi and it is a ploy to bring me more firmly into the fold of the congregation. Whatever. The Old Duffer 1.0 is saddened by his children so if I can help to explicate the estrangement from the child's point of view maybe that will ease his pain. Old Duffer and Mrs. Old Duffer are lovely people but I can see how the professorial Old Duffer might be an annoyance. It takes all my patience and good will to suck it up and play with him for two hours at a stretch. Now he wants me to join he and his wife at the community sings and play along with Mitch, or rather Sally. I doubt that will happen this month but maybe in the future.
Actually they want me to play and that is a compliment of sorts. But the mere thought of listening to others flail at the sing-along makes me quake. I think this month this orphan of the storm has too much going on to engage with these good folks. But the thought, just the thought, of doing this and giving up my childish things and joining the ranks of Duffers leaves me cold.
I do attract the Old Duffers of the world. Mrs. Shankland across the way, or street as it were, has bonded to me on a strange mother/daughter sort of way. She constantly comes over and checks out my garden and gives me extended visits where she talks non-stop about things that interest her, like Old Duffer 1.0 and I, like a good child, cajole and listen. And such is the nature of my relationships with the Old Duffers of the universe. To cajole and listen raptly.
I suppose this makes of me an Old Duffer aficionado. I do so loves me a good Old Duffer. My dad was a premature Old Duffer and really grew into the role when we spent a few weeks together in my tiny condo as he stayed with me post kidney surgery. That last six months when we both had cancer diagnoses was the closest we had been in a long time. Not since those summers when he beat me at tennis as he refused to chase the ball and insisted that I hit it back to him without reciprocity were good years. And I last time I saw him I think I had a foreshadowing of his passing, which he did a few weeks later. I knew when the neighbor called me that Monday night that he was gone, even before she found him laying dead in the family manse.
And now I have Old Duffer 1.0 once a week, grooming me for the community sings. Gotta love Old Duffers.
Monday, May 30, 2016
Truth be told
I was just pondering my last post and it made me sad. Not just that I had lost a friend but that we are all getting older and more and more of our time will be spent at funerals and memorials. I worry constantly about my friends, my retiree friends. I want to hold them so close so nothing will happen to them. I worry that I will lose them, or that they will suffer some of the ultimate losses that makes going on so hard. And as most of my friends are women I worry about them losing their husbands, their soulmates. Sophie, dear woman that she is, was the first to lose a husband. She did not misplace him. He died sixteen years ago. It was a New Year's Eve/Day when he died at home. And that home was no longer a home for Sophie. Sixteen years have passed and she now seems more assured of herself. But it took growing pains of sixteen years. Seem is 70 now and my friends who are in their 70s now when they will suffer a loss, and they will, might it take them sixteen years to move on, if at all?
Hyphen dear sweet Hyphen was always the one who would point out we never know what life has in store for us. And that hit her so hard in the end that she is no longer able to practice. The traumatic brain injury so injurious as to make it hard for her to think. But Hyphen dear sweet Hyphen would opine that is the way of the world. You just never know.
I worry that the cats grow older. I look in the mirror and wonder where I went. Time is a thief.
And yet...
I was out walking this morning and decided to change my route. I meandered through a new neighborhood for me and as a hawk swooped down and landed in front of me and I pondered this meaning, I looked up as he flew off to see, through the buildings, a huge man-made lake surrounded by homes. Of course this proved to be a private lake, the bastards, and I couldn't get any closer than
the road. For those of you in the area it is between Harrison and Coolidge on Chartwell Dual...So if Hope is a thing with feathers, this young hawk showed me the hope of the lake. Of people enjoying ann early morning on the lake, a shimmering clear sand-bottomed lake (none of this muddy lake for these home dwellers), shimmering under the morning sun.
Some days I find growing old to be a gift and not a thief. Some days the concept of being a crone is very appealing. I think the crone is the female counterpart, in a good sense, of a curmudgeon. We are wise from our years, we have learned from our years. Yes, I am still dealing with past hurts in therapy but the new hurts pass much more quickly as I learn to be still and let the time sink into me. Yes, the cats grow old, but at least they do. It is better than the options. Yes, I worry about losing them. I worry every time my Aunt Marilyn calls early in my day from California that she is calling to tell me someone has died. I listen to her contemplate being 85 and all her ills, both mental and physical, and hear her fret about growing old and the fear in her voice. I am twenty three years her junior and some days I feel that fear.
I shall bypass the long philosophical question and quest of what happens when we die. I think that is just that. I worry about the pain of dying. Yes, I have heard from others as they watched loved one pass, that as the body dies in stages it is painful, not quite the dying in the sleep we all ultimately hope for but more often than not a morphine induced haze to make the transition tolerable.
So aside from the pain of dying and the questions about the soul, should there be such an entity, I have no complaints. I hope to have a life well lived and live I shall. I shall enjoy the cats, the yard, my roses, my home, my neighbors, my neighborhood, the raccoons who live in my trash can...yes all this and heaven too. Life will go on after I have gone on and that is as it should be.
Hyphen dear sweet Hyphen was always the one who would point out we never know what life has in store for us. And that hit her so hard in the end that she is no longer able to practice. The traumatic brain injury so injurious as to make it hard for her to think. But Hyphen dear sweet Hyphen would opine that is the way of the world. You just never know.
I worry that the cats grow older. I look in the mirror and wonder where I went. Time is a thief.
And yet...
I was out walking this morning and decided to change my route. I meandered through a new neighborhood for me and as a hawk swooped down and landed in front of me and I pondered this meaning, I looked up as he flew off to see, through the buildings, a huge man-made lake surrounded by homes. Of course this proved to be a private lake, the bastards, and I couldn't get any closer than
the road. For those of you in the area it is between Harrison and Coolidge on Chartwell Dual...So if Hope is a thing with feathers, this young hawk showed me the hope of the lake. Of people enjoying ann early morning on the lake, a shimmering clear sand-bottomed lake (none of this muddy lake for these home dwellers), shimmering under the morning sun.
Some days I find growing old to be a gift and not a thief. Some days the concept of being a crone is very appealing. I think the crone is the female counterpart, in a good sense, of a curmudgeon. We are wise from our years, we have learned from our years. Yes, I am still dealing with past hurts in therapy but the new hurts pass much more quickly as I learn to be still and let the time sink into me. Yes, the cats grow old, but at least they do. It is better than the options. Yes, I worry about losing them. I worry every time my Aunt Marilyn calls early in my day from California that she is calling to tell me someone has died. I listen to her contemplate being 85 and all her ills, both mental and physical, and hear her fret about growing old and the fear in her voice. I am twenty three years her junior and some days I feel that fear.
I shall bypass the long philosophical question and quest of what happens when we die. I think that is just that. I worry about the pain of dying. Yes, I have heard from others as they watched loved one pass, that as the body dies in stages it is painful, not quite the dying in the sleep we all ultimately hope for but more often than not a morphine induced haze to make the transition tolerable.
So aside from the pain of dying and the questions about the soul, should there be such an entity, I have no complaints. I hope to have a life well lived and live I shall. I shall enjoy the cats, the yard, my roses, my home, my neighbors, my neighborhood, the raccoons who live in my trash can...yes all this and heaven too. Life will go on after I have gone on and that is as it should be.
Sunday, May 29, 2016
It just seems...
Like two weeks ago we had snow. Since then the sky has opened blue and the temperature uses each day into the 80s. Life is good and the sun is warm. The boys, at least two of them, have found a sunny spot in the dining room window. Hence this...
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
These boys enjoy the sun as Yankel Cat lay under the ceiling fan in the bedroom.
Yes is was two weeks ago today that we had snow and if the worm had turned that was the turning. Two weeks ago I was covering my tender tomato and pepper plants with a sheet to protect them from a frost. Two weeks ago today I meandered to breakfast wearing a heavy jacket. Two weeks ago today seems like an eternity ago.
Today it was in the 80s and the sky was azure. I felt a certain optimism. Yet there was sadness in the air. There was a memorial service for a former library friend. Her son and neighbors arranged an outdoor memorial service in her backyard; a yard filled with plants of every sort. A kind of wild garden, an absolute epitome of the women herself. And, as an aside, an old friend from the library showed up from Connecticut and actually hugged me. It was bittersweet seeing her again. I had been a total asshole when she worked at the library while she finished her MLS. I am reminded of the Paul Simon song "Still Crazy After All These Years". She seemed so glad to seem me I just had to smile. We talked about the old times ad had a glass of cheer...still crazy....
It was a wonderful memorial for the master of the backhanded compliment. She was an immigrant, a stranger in a not so strange land. She was a person who valued bluntness. And was she ever. She worked alongside my pal Jerry and the two of them were quite a pair: he murdering the English language and she bluntly exposing the truth. My favorite of her compliments was to a friend, actually Sophie, and she said to her "most heavy women could not wear a outfit like that but on you it looks good". She was a good German woman, a child in Nazi Germany and emigrated after the war. Durrkopp was her maiden name and her father, as she told it, raised horses for the Nazis. They were spared some of the atrocities of war because of this. She emigrated after the war and married. The couple them came to MSU where, according to her, she killed her husband by making him quit smoking whereupon he took up chewing gum and choke on said chewing gum and died. And she would bluntly tell this story time and again.
The last time I had a chance to speak to her was at Jerry's wake, not to be confused with his memorial tree service. She was 89 at the time and made a point to tell everyone this. I worried about her driving as she never got over the fact that there was no Autobahn in the States yet she drove as if she were on it. She made it to a few of the Library's social after that but really stopped coming after she turned 90 or so. She grew addled and ended up in an extended care facility and died shortly thereafter. Her neighbors today spoke of caring for her in her own house until she became so addled it was no longer practical. She was 93 when she died. Her neighbor Rita, with whom she spoke nightly, quoted a line from Emily Dickinson, which I shall parse here:
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
There will always be a part of me that will miss her: her bluntness, her love of orchids, her love of nature, her love of her dogs, her love of learning new things and her lead foot on the gas. It was a beautiful day for a memorial and a fitting tribute to my friend.
Monday, May 23, 2016
Blisters
On my feet. I gots 'em. Spending a great deal of time walking of late and working in the garden and regardless of the fact the I wear good shoes I get blisters. I think this is my mother reaching out from the grave and saying her famous line "I don't know why you got (fill in the blank). It doesn't do (fill in the blank again). Some of our biggest fights were over my choice of footwear and her insistence that I were heels or flats with a too small toe box. I rebelled with my footwear, moreso as I got older. So in addition to blaming mother for the blisters I am also blaming sweating feet and rubbing toes. My feet seem to be misshaped from years of toxic footwear. And a small blister from yesterday turned into a massive blood blister on my big toe today, a gift from a long walk into the art fair in East Lansing, where I swore I would not get anything I could not carry home and I ended up carrying home a too heavy garden sculpture make of iron and stone. A gift for the house, specifically for the back yard.
This house has received more gifts from me than I can count. First the gift of me. Then the remodel, the new rugs, furniture, lamps, the new kitchen, the new bathroom and the countless gifts of filling the house with home goods, like sheets, towels and sundries. I must learn to acquire less and enjoy what I have. But this piece of rustic rusting iron with a bevy of stones spoke to me, in a zen sort of way. So home it came to be placed between the deck and the patio.
More gifts. The rose bed...looking good. I think I now have twelve rose bushes. Most are floribundas. Some are ground cover. They are set to bloom in a week I should think. The area on the side of the house where the roses dwell gets full sun and the soil is very clay-like. Roses love clay soil. Also I threw in a handful of ten penny nails in each hole I was planting the rose in as they also love iron. And the roses last year, the first year of my rose garden, were spectacular. Fragrant and beautiful.
Monday promises to be a busy day as I have therapy and then Sophie, ah yes, Sophie whom we have heard little of since her retirement, is taking me to a nursery to get a flat of flowers to border the rose garden. I would like to get some potted flowering annuals to spruce up the House. The House That Must Be Fed. I think that is why I had the flood three weeks ago. Not paying homage to the house. Well more flowers are coming, baby, and all will be right. No more floods...please...pretty please. I should also like to pick up a patio tomato plant just because. My small vegetable garden is doing splendidly, as is my herb garden. Today I put the larger tomato plants in bondage, circling a cage about them. And I have been watering them and caring for the gardens. All that I currently have is planted so of course I want more to plant.
Mrs. Kravitz from across the street showed me her garden and patio today. She has really paid homage to her home. Pots of flowers everywhere the eye looks. I don't want to go that crazy but then she has lived there over forty years and has collected lots of pots and lots of ideas. I rely on my sensibilities. I have pots in the garden but they are not suitable. Her pots are lovely.
So anyway off to Van Atta's we will go. I have to be home by 4:00 as the Old Duffer is coming by to play guitar with me and I am hoping he would like to do so on the front porch and take advantage of the weather. Last Sunday, the 15th, it snowed. This week not so much. It was lovely in every sense of the word. The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra la. After Old Duffer leaves my friend Eastman is coming by to set the TV up. See there is another present for the house. A great deal I could not pass up on a newer TV than what I had. A 4K UHD TV...Yahoo and all that crap. Eastman will get the older one for a small price and he will make good use of it.
That should be all the presents for the house for a long time. I should be receiving a check from the insurance company for my loses in the flood. Four itemized pages of loses. Who knew I had that much stuff in the basement. It was as if another person had taken up residence in the basement and it was she who sustained the loses. Still I am waiting for money like manna from heaven. It has only been a week since the paperwork has been filed but dang give me the money.
And so dear children as the moon is full and so am I off to bed I go with dreams of flowers in my head. Up early to take a walk and do some grocery shopping...gotta get my steps in, and then a 12:00 therapy sessions, home again, home again jiggidty jig and off to Van Atta's. Too bad I ain't all that tired.
This house has received more gifts from me than I can count. First the gift of me. Then the remodel, the new rugs, furniture, lamps, the new kitchen, the new bathroom and the countless gifts of filling the house with home goods, like sheets, towels and sundries. I must learn to acquire less and enjoy what I have. But this piece of rustic rusting iron with a bevy of stones spoke to me, in a zen sort of way. So home it came to be placed between the deck and the patio.
More gifts. The rose bed...looking good. I think I now have twelve rose bushes. Most are floribundas. Some are ground cover. They are set to bloom in a week I should think. The area on the side of the house where the roses dwell gets full sun and the soil is very clay-like. Roses love clay soil. Also I threw in a handful of ten penny nails in each hole I was planting the rose in as they also love iron. And the roses last year, the first year of my rose garden, were spectacular. Fragrant and beautiful.
Monday promises to be a busy day as I have therapy and then Sophie, ah yes, Sophie whom we have heard little of since her retirement, is taking me to a nursery to get a flat of flowers to border the rose garden. I would like to get some potted flowering annuals to spruce up the House. The House That Must Be Fed. I think that is why I had the flood three weeks ago. Not paying homage to the house. Well more flowers are coming, baby, and all will be right. No more floods...please...pretty please. I should also like to pick up a patio tomato plant just because. My small vegetable garden is doing splendidly, as is my herb garden. Today I put the larger tomato plants in bondage, circling a cage about them. And I have been watering them and caring for the gardens. All that I currently have is planted so of course I want more to plant.
Mrs. Kravitz from across the street showed me her garden and patio today. She has really paid homage to her home. Pots of flowers everywhere the eye looks. I don't want to go that crazy but then she has lived there over forty years and has collected lots of pots and lots of ideas. I rely on my sensibilities. I have pots in the garden but they are not suitable. Her pots are lovely.
So anyway off to Van Atta's we will go. I have to be home by 4:00 as the Old Duffer is coming by to play guitar with me and I am hoping he would like to do so on the front porch and take advantage of the weather. Last Sunday, the 15th, it snowed. This week not so much. It was lovely in every sense of the word. The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra la. After Old Duffer leaves my friend Eastman is coming by to set the TV up. See there is another present for the house. A great deal I could not pass up on a newer TV than what I had. A 4K UHD TV...Yahoo and all that crap. Eastman will get the older one for a small price and he will make good use of it.
That should be all the presents for the house for a long time. I should be receiving a check from the insurance company for my loses in the flood. Four itemized pages of loses. Who knew I had that much stuff in the basement. It was as if another person had taken up residence in the basement and it was she who sustained the loses. Still I am waiting for money like manna from heaven. It has only been a week since the paperwork has been filed but dang give me the money.
And so dear children as the moon is full and so am I off to bed I go with dreams of flowers in my head. Up early to take a walk and do some grocery shopping...gotta get my steps in, and then a 12:00 therapy sessions, home again, home again jiggidty jig and off to Van Atta's. Too bad I ain't all that tired.
Friday, May 20, 2016
Maybe now it is a sure thing
Maybe now the worm has turned or more to the point the weather has turned. Since last Sunday's appearance of snow the weather has slowly and steadily improved to the point it is no jacket in the morning and shorts in the afternoon weather. Windows are flung open at home and ere know I am sleeping in a sweatshirt the windows are staying open at night. The tomato and pepper plants survived last weekend's snow/sleet/hail/rain storms and the herbs did well, save for a lonely basil plant which the Good Tuna, that being the Green Tuna, shall pick up for me today at the plant sale on campus.
This place is lousy with mice. I was out in the Cyber Cafe as a daredevil mouse fell from the sky, or rather the ceiling, and two Cafe employees were attempting to capture it with a device consisting of two plastic cups without lids so as to escort it out of the building. Dang, we need us some library cats to patrol the dwindling stacks where the mice seem to have found a home away from home and other inconvenient places like office desk drawers. I once asked about having a library cat or two, as some libraries do, but was told too many people are allergic to cats to populate the stacks with them. Also, I think it might be a tad unnerving to see a cat with a mouse in its mouth off for a quick bite.
Which reminds me of a story, as these things do, of a cat name of Moon, a beautiful Russian Blue (the Archangel Cat). Moon Cat was a prodigious mouser. He also enjoyed having a bit of meat with me at dinner at night, which he would play with for a while, the meat that is, and then eat. One night I was sleeping in bed and Moon came in playing with his piece of pork steak I had given him at dinner that night. I reached down to grab the meat away from him, as he was disturbing my sleep, only to utter those fateful words "Oh, shit, meat doesn't have fur!" Yes, he had brought his latest kill into the bedroom and was presenting me with a gift. Of course in German a gift is poison. Yikes.
Into the weekend we go. Planting some tonight, ground cover roses. Additionally, off to Le Kroger for some groceries manana. Tomorrow brings the Art Fair as well as a Tea at the Kellogg Center, both of which I will attend. Sunday should be a quiet day with lots of time in the yard weeding. A puttering sort of day.
Ah, Green Tuna has just delivered us from, wait, not evil, but a basil free summer. Five, count 'em, five basil plants. Pesto anyone?
This place is lousy with mice. I was out in the Cyber Cafe as a daredevil mouse fell from the sky, or rather the ceiling, and two Cafe employees were attempting to capture it with a device consisting of two plastic cups without lids so as to escort it out of the building. Dang, we need us some library cats to patrol the dwindling stacks where the mice seem to have found a home away from home and other inconvenient places like office desk drawers. I once asked about having a library cat or two, as some libraries do, but was told too many people are allergic to cats to populate the stacks with them. Also, I think it might be a tad unnerving to see a cat with a mouse in its mouth off for a quick bite.
Which reminds me of a story, as these things do, of a cat name of Moon, a beautiful Russian Blue (the Archangel Cat). Moon Cat was a prodigious mouser. He also enjoyed having a bit of meat with me at dinner at night, which he would play with for a while, the meat that is, and then eat. One night I was sleeping in bed and Moon came in playing with his piece of pork steak I had given him at dinner that night. I reached down to grab the meat away from him, as he was disturbing my sleep, only to utter those fateful words "Oh, shit, meat doesn't have fur!" Yes, he had brought his latest kill into the bedroom and was presenting me with a gift. Of course in German a gift is poison. Yikes.
Into the weekend we go. Planting some tonight, ground cover roses. Additionally, off to Le Kroger for some groceries manana. Tomorrow brings the Art Fair as well as a Tea at the Kellogg Center, both of which I will attend. Sunday should be a quiet day with lots of time in the yard weeding. A puttering sort of day.
Ah, Green Tuna has just delivered us from, wait, not evil, but a basil free summer. Five, count 'em, five basil plants. Pesto anyone?
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